Any Major Love

We all may have attended weddings during which the happy couple chose the most inappropriate tune for “Our Song”. Stalker theme Every Breath You Take, perhaps, “because every breath she takes I will be watching her”, or James Blunt’s psycho anthem You’re Beautiful “because, you know, she is beautiful”. The potential for awful choices is endless.

Relief is at hand with this compilation, bang on time for Valentine’s Day. This mix is useful for weddings, but I’ve tried not to make it an obvious wedding theme — The Dixie Cups can stay at home, as can Billy Idol.

It can work as a wedding proposal mix, even though it lacks the insistence of Beyoncé (or the cheery bounciness of the rather good Bruno Mars). And even though some songs speak of getting hitched — Springsteen is pretty clear about his intentions; clearly his little girl of the song is not the pregnant Mary nor the mother-in-law wielding Sherry, nor the unnamed wife with kid in Baltimore Jack, who feature on the same double LP — it is not exclusive to that purpose.

It might work best as a collection of love songs: some celebrating just being in love, some expressing hope for a nuptial future, some expressing love within marriage. I didn’t necessarily make this mix to get you laid, but if Peter Mayer’s or Deb Talan’s beautiful songs (based on poems by William Jay Smith and Pablo Neruda respectively) doesn’t make your beloved go all doe-eyed , you might have a problem. Ben Fold’s The Luckiest, meanwhile, might be the greatest love song in pop. Pity that the woman he wrote it for is now his ex-wife… In everything, I’ve tried to avoid the most obvious songs. If you are so fortunate as to have a loved one, perhaps some of the songs on this mix will help articulate how you feel.

As ever, the mix is timed to fit on a standard CD-R and includes home-romanced covers. The front cover photo is by Prawny; the gorgeous back cover photo by Dedulo Photos (both morguefile.com).

Fun mix. Have you heard “The Luckiest (About Time Version)”? It reminds me of the version of Landed with Strings that was a B-side in Australia. It’s interesting to have an alternate version on occasion. In the case of the Luckiest – I probably prefer the original, but I do like the strings added to ‘Landed’. Speaking of covers – I do love the Pete Yorn cover of Never My Love. I digress, I really enjoyed this mix.

Hi Steve. I think I prefer the strings version of Landed. But my favourite one is on a bootleg from a gig in Berlin in, I think, 2005. The About Time version of The Luckiest is nice, but not as good as the one with the orchestra on the Live in Perth DVD with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. I could have used that one for this mix, in the interest of variety.

Your remarks about inappropriate songs really struck home. I was a mobile DJ in the ’90s, and hosted my share of weddings. “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” was a frequent request; some wedding parties (or groups of guests) actually had worked out performance routines — gestures, steps, trading vocal parts. Could never figure out why it was so popular at weddings.

I suppose Meat Loaf’s undertaking to die miserably (while praying for the end of time) rather than seek a divorce makes this a song of marital fidelity. Not very romantic at all, though, and awfully pessimistic.